Skip to main content

Obama picks Volcker to lead committee

Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to lead a new White House economic advisory committee.

New York Times has the details:

"Mr. Obama made the announcement at his third news conference in three days. The public appearances by the president-elect are intended to show Americans that his team is focusing on resolving the financial crisis, which Mr. Obama said Wednesday demands “fresh thinking and bold new ideas from the leading minds across America.”

Mr. Volcker, 81, has been providing Mr. Obama with advice on the economy for months. After briefly considering him for Treasury secretary, Mr. Obama instead asked Mr. Volcker to lead the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a new panel to be comprised of leading figurees als from a variety of business sectors. The group is supposed to advise Mr. Obama on how to jump-start the economy and stabilize the financial markets...

Mr. Volcker became chairman of the Federal Reserve in August 1979 as President Jimmy Carter was fighting to rein in the inflation caused by the oil shocks of 1973 and 1978. Mr. Volcker, who led the Fed until 1987, often used tactics that were unpopular, like rapid increases in interest rates. Criticized at the time for causing a recession, Mr. Volcker was later praised for the effectiveness of his efforts."

The appointment of Volcker to head this committe will be seen as a smart move on Obama's part, especially by those who favorably recall Volcker's efforts to wring excess inflation from the US economy in the early 1980s.

Some, like Marc Faber, might even say that Obama should go one step further and try to appoint Paul Volcker as the new Federal Reserve chairman!

Related articles and posts:

1. Discussion on the economic crisis with Paul Volcker - Charlie Rose.

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi